The present invention relates generally to powered jacking devices and more particularly to powered landing gear for trailers.
Raising and lowering supports, such as landing gear or supports for trailers, can be a time-consuming and tiring physical task. It is known in the art to provide powered landing gear to eliminate the need for manually rotating a jacking device. The devices provide some advantages and benefits over relying simply on manual labor to provide the force needed to power jacking devices that raise and lower trailer landing gear. Still, prior attempts have met with very limited success because of a number of drawbacks. For example, prior art devices are typically complex, expensive, and difficult to install. Prior art devices have often been unreliable and are typically difficult to service, repair, or replace when problems arise. Prior art devices have often been connected to and relied upon the manual drive gearboxes of trailers, which can be undesirable for a number of reasons. For example, intermeshing a powered drive with a manual drive gearbox can make installation undesirably complex and time consuming. Further, intermeshing the powered drive with the manual drive gearbox can also impair the functionality of the manual jacking device and interfere with manual operation of the jacking device if that becomes necessary or desirable. Further still, the gearing used in different manual jacking devices can vary widely from device to device, so relying upon the gearing of different manual drive gear boxes can lead to an undesirable loss of predictability of performance. The complicated nature of the prior art devices and their methods of attachment have often made it undesirable for anyone other than a skilled technician to attempt retrofitting existing trailers with the devices.